It starts with Rita alone on the balcony, doing nothing. She decides to continue her work, making perfume, but the scent brings her a flashback that made her down. Then she goes to the bookstore, but the odor of the books does the same thing. So does the bread, and the sea. She becomes more sensitive to the odors around, gets trapped. At the end, she is at the bench, thinking about the conversation about her favorite scent, hugging herself, alone.

Director's Statement

A human can detect more than one trillion different odors, including flowers, trees, rocks, metal, and themselves. Each person has their own distinct odor, like a fingerprint. What does your favorite person smell like? Maybe she smells like a soft fabric sheet getting dried in the sunlight, or a pine leaf wet by the cold rain at the sea?

It’s always the odor that holds my memory. And it's a combination of several odors for each event, like, I still remember the first time hugging my loved one: I can smell her cloth, her shampoo, the wall warmed by sunlight, the hot latte, the fresh and cool air after rain...this combination will come to me again without a hint, and bring me back to the scene immediately. I guess that's one reason people make perfume and fragrances, to mark everyone and everything easily. Though in psychology, it's hard to change what memory is connected to which odor. Similar to a love relationship.

Lovers would influence each other: my favorite book, my favorite film, the food I like, the food I hate, the way I talk, all my habits…as time goes by, three weeks, three months, three years, a decade...Eventually, there'll be a part of me that belongs to that person forever. Like an invisible tattoo, it’s hard to get rid of. It has been a paradox to me for a long time: the part of me belongs to the person that makes me feel broken but also completes who I am. It’s not painful, but it prevents me from feeling what’s new. And that is what I want to talk about.

Composer's Statement

Tender Scent is a slow-paced movie. The odor of Hubert reminds Rita, the leading role of the film, of the sweet and happy memories between them. I can feel the loneliness, peace, sadness, and heartbreak of Rita. In general, the music conveys Rita’s emotions. Rita deeply misses Hubert. To capture her yearning, I composed a recurring music theme that represents Rita’s feelings when she recalls their joyful past. The happier the memory is, the sadder the music becomes. I endeavored to write a memorable melody for this theme, which develops alongside Rita’s deepening emotions. In terms of instrumentation, I chose a traditional orchestra with subtle synthesizer elements. While the authentic tone colors of the orchestra suit the film, the synthesizer adds intriguing sounds and textures. To heighten the emotional impact of the climax, I utilized a female vocal. The warmth and power of the vocal performance effectively convey Rita’s broken emotions and her longing for Hubert.

Additionally, a notable aspect of the film is the similarity between the music at the beginning when Rita sits and drinks, and the music when she sits on the bridge and eats bread. These scenes describe an empty and somber atmosphere surrounding Rita, so I tried to make some connections between them by using the same music theme. However, I changed the orchestration to make the music of these two scenes sound slightly different and refreshing.

Furthermore, as Rita walks faster and faster in the street, I employed contemporary composition techniques to create subtle chaos that mirrors her growing irritability. While the chaos remains relatively slight, it adds an additional layer of tension and restlessness to the scene.

To sum up, by carefully considering the emotional aspect of Tender Scent, I sought to create music by exploring music themes, instrumentation, and composition techniques. I hope the audience's connection with Rita's journey can be enhanced through the music. This is the third time I have collaborated with the director Teng Chen. I appreciate him giving me the opportunity to score this wonderful film. I hope we will create more works together in the future!

Crew

CT Chen - Director

CT (Teng Chen) is a Chinese film director and screenwriter. He grew up in Caton, China. After graduating from the South China Normal University with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2016, he worked for 2 years as an editor on a photography website and short film studio. In 2019 he became an MFA student in film at Rochester Institute of Technology. He loves suspense and dark humor. Currently, he is located in Canton, China.

Komal Ashfaq - Producer

Komal Ashfaq is an award-winning Pakistani filmmaker and creative management professional. She has worked on freelance producing many independent live action film sets, alongside her regular career in production management for the industry’s biggest shows including For All Mankind, Spider-Man Team Up, The Flash, John Wick, Quantum Leap etc. Her career spans live action, VFX, CGI and EdTech. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production Management, and was the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Student Award 2021, the Womens Council Award 2019, and the American Association of University Women award 2019. In her free time, she works on her personal creative and film projects, which have won national news coverage and a small followership in her home country, Pakistan. At this time she has no cats or dogs, which is very disappointing.

Yuenkwan Cheung - Composer

Yuenkwan Cheung is a composer based in Los Angeles, United States and Shunde, China. She composes for visual media and has been credited for short films and animations including Bad Hair Day (2020), Say Nothing (2021), Mini Alien (2021) and Tender Scent (2022). Born and raised in Shunde, China, Yuenkwan has been interested in music and composition since she was a child. Yuenkwan studied Communication at South China Normal University in Guangzhou. After college, she worked in advertising and social work domains and began studies in music composition. In 2019, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her passion for music composition and graduated from the Film Scoring Certificate Program at UCLA Extension in 2021.

Wen Tong - Cinematographer

Wen Tong is a Rochester-based cinematographer and colorist with an MFA in Film Production and has just started being a freelance colorist.

Besides using color to brush and polish a film, in Wen's day-to-day life, he spends much time experiencing color science, trying to bridge objective science to the subjunctive film world. Wen

believes the better he understands how people interact with the motion picture consciously or unconsciously, the better decision he can make when it comes to color grading.

Behind the Scenes: